Paula A. Franzese, Esq.
Professor Paula Franzese, the Peter W. Rodino Professor of Law, is one of the country's leading experts in property law as well as government ethics. She has spearheaded ethics reform initiatives on behalf of three governors, serving as Special Ethics Counsel to Governor Richard Codey, Chair of the State Ethics Commission, Vice-Chair of the Election Law Enforcement Commission and as ethics advisor to state and local governments across the country, including Mayor Cory Booker's administration in Newark. In 2014, Professor Franzese was appointed Vice-Chair of the New Jersey Supreme Court Special Committee on Attorney Ethics and Admissions.
The author of numerous publications, her scholarship in the area of Property Law includes critical examination of common interest communities, homeowners associations and the dilemma of privatization, the law of servitudes, exclusionary zoning, affordable housing, adverse possession doctrine and takings law. She joined in the submission to the U.S. Supreme Court of an amicus brief in the Kelo Case, and has written and presented on takings law reform. She has been elected a Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, a highly coveted honor, is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and the recipient of numerous accolades, including the Sir Thomas More Medal of Honor, the YWCA Woman of Influence Award, the Women Lawyers Association's Trailblazer Award, and the State Bar Foundation's Medal of Honor. Most recently, in 2013 she received the Woman of Achievement Award from the NJ Federation of Women's Clubs. In 2011, she was presented with the National Council on Governmental Ethics Laws(COGEL)Award, the highest form of recognition conferred by the organization, in honor of her "significant,demonstrable and positive contributions to the fields of campaign finance, elections, ethics, freedom of information and lobbying over a significant period of time." Amongst her groundbreaking initiatives in those arenas, she and Justice Daniel J. O'Hern promulgated the Uniform Ethics Code, a pioneering statutory achievement and a model for national replication.
Professor Franzese’s casebook, Property Law and the Public Interest (with Callies, Mandelker & Hylton), was widely heralded as one of the first to expansively explore the public interest dimensions of Property law. She has been named to the editorial board of the Land Use and Environmental Law Review, a prestigious peer-reviewed scholarly journal. She has published extensively on the anatomy of ethics reform of state and local government, and in the areas of legal pedagogy and attorney professionalism. Professor Franzese is the creator and editor of the Westlaw collection of substantive first year review books entitled "The Short and Happy Guide" series. She is the author of A Short and Happy Guide to Property (West, 2d ed. 2012),the author of Strategies and Techniques for Teaching Property (Aspen 2012), is a contributor to the books America's Second Gilded Age? Perspectives on Law and Class Differences (NYU Press, 2006), The Affective Assistance of Counsel: Practicing Law as a Healing Profession (Carolina Academic Press, 2007), and Reaction and Reform in New Jersey (Hall Institute, 2007).
Nationally renowned for her excellence in law teaching, a new book names Professor Franzese one of only 26 "best law teachers in the United States." The book, What the Best Law Teachers Do (Harvard University Press 2013), profiles in detail the pedagogical approach that renders her a "dazzlingly effective model of rigor, hard work, creativity and humility." Professor Franzese is the unprecedented ten-time recipient of the Student Bar Association's Professor of the Year Award, has been named "Exemplary Teacher" by the American Association of Higher Education and was ranked the Top Law Professor in New Jersey by the New Jersey Law Journal. She has demonstrated and deconstructed her pedagogical expertise on teaching as both art and science at workshops and colloquia across the country. She is the Gilbert's "Legend of the Law" in Property (CD series, Lexis) and the national Property lecturer for the BAR/BRI bar review course. She is the past Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Teaching Methods and serves as Vice-Chair of the Legal Education Section of the American Bar Association.
Professor Franzese was a litigator with Cahill, Gordon, and Reindel in New York City, where she also served as a member of the New York Housing Court Reform Project and the Governor's Task Force on Life and Law. She clerked for Justice Alan B. Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court. She received her B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Barnard College, Columbia University, where she was awarded the Bryson Prize, Alpha Zeta Fellowship, Marion Churchill White Prize, Davidson-Foreman Foundation Award and Barnard Alumnae Fellowship, and her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, where she was an International Fellow, Teaching Fellow and recipient of the prestigious Rosenman Prize for excellence in public law courses.
